DEERHUNTER - Atlas Sound, appreciation thread

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DEERHUNTER: Deerhunter is an American four-piece indie rock group originating from Atlanta, Georgia. The band, consisting of Bradford Cox, Moses Archuleta, Josh Fauver, and Lockett Pundt, have described themselves as "ambient punk," though they incorporate a wide range of genres, including noise rock, art rock, shoegaze, and post-punk, as well significant pop elements. The band has gone through several line-up changes and the death of a member.

Formation and "Turn It Up Faggot" (2001-2005)

The band was co-founded in 2001 by vocalist Bradford Cox and drummer/keyboardist Moses Archuleta.[1] The name Deerhunter came from the band's first drummer, Dan Walton, who was asked to leave the band early in its career.[2] The band were joined by Colin Mee, whom Cox met while Mee was living at the Atlanta label Die Slaughterhaus Records with members of Black Lips. In 2004 the group's first bassist, Justin Bosworth, died of head injuries suffered in a skateboarding accident. He appeared on only one Deerhunter release, the Deerhunter/Alphabets Split, issued before their debut album. Joshua Fauver, of Atlanta punk band Electrosleep International, then took up the position as bassist. Bosworth's death influenced the sound of Deerhunter's first album, Turn It Up Faggot, which was "the result of a lot of negativity".[3] After the band finished the album, in an indication of how difficult it was to record in the wake of his bandmate's death, Cox said "I don't ever want to make this album again".[3] The album's liner notes are dedicated to Bosworth. After the release of "Turn It Up Faggot", Cox asked his best friend from high school, Lockett Pundt, to join the band.

Cryptograms and Fluorescent Grey EP (2005 - 2007)

The band, now featuring Pundt's reverb-saturated guitar sound, went on tour, playing shows with the likes of Lightning Bolt and Gang Gang Dance. This tour culminated in a recording session engineered by acclaimed folk musician Samara Lubelski at Rare Book Room, New York.[4] This session failed to produce anything that could be used, due to Cox’s mental and physical state at the time, as well as disagreements that emerged with Lubleski.[4] Cox has kept a copy of the sessions on "a scratched CD-R under my bed" and has stated that "nobody will ever hear them".[4] In spite of Cox's claim excerpts from those sessions were later posted as a free download on the band's blog. The band returned to the same studio where they recorded their first album outside Athens, Georgia and decided to give recording their second album another attempt. This was partly due to advice received from the band Liars, who encouraged them to re-record it.[4]

It took only two days in November 2005 for the band to record their second album, entitled Cryptograms. In 2006, before its release, Pitchfork Media added "Spring Hall Convert", a song from the record, to its "Infinite Mix Tape series".[5] The album was released by Kranky in January 2007. The album revealed a more subdued and introverted[6] sound for the band. As with their first album, Cryptograms also had a dedication inside the album's liner notes, this time to a friend of Cox's, Bradley Ira Harris, a heroin addict who died in 2005.[4]

On May 8 2007, the group released the Fluorescent Grey EP, which was recorded in July 2006. In the same month, the band released the Whirlyball 7" single, which was only available at Criminal Records, a record shop in Atlanta. The single also acted as a ticket to a show.[7]

On the 29th of August 2007, the group became a quartet with the loss of guitarist Colin Mee. Mee departed because he "...couldn't make it to a couple of shows we had booked next weekend and that was unacceptable to certain bandmates".[8] Mee rejoined the band after their autumn 2007 European tour.

Future and Microcastle (2007-present)

Deerhunter contributed the song "After Class" to Living Bridge, a compilation put together by Rare Book Room Records. The song was recorded in the same place where they attempted to record their second album, the Rare Book Room studios, and the album was released in February 2008.

The quartet's third album, Microcastle[9], was released on October 27 2008, co-released with Weird Era Cont., a bonus album recorded several months after the completion of the Microcastle recordings. Microcastle was leaked on the internet May 31, 2008. Microcastle debuted at #123 on the Billboard 200.[10] Colin Mee again left the band, to be replaced by former cheerleader and high school friend of Cox's, Whitney Petty.

While touring the Microcastle album in the UK, Cox booked an evening in a studio and recorded what would become the On Platts Eyott cassette. This was released in two batches of 100 copies each; an edition of pink cassettes was given out to competition winners by his record label and orange cassettes were sold at a special Halloween concert in Atlanta on the 31st of October 2008. In a comment left on the Deerhunter blog on February 28, Cox announced that Whitney Petty was no longer a member of the band, stating "We will be a four-piece again for now. Whitney is what you would call a 'free spirit.' She's also a great friend. Deerhunter is the four of us. We might have people come and go and that's just how we keep things interesting for ourselves."[11]

On May 18, 2009, Deerhunter released a new EP, entitled Rainwater Cassette Exchange, which was later released digitally June 8, 2009 on CD and LP.[12] To promote the EP, they embarked on a short summer trek with No Age and Dan Deacon as the "No Deachunter Tour".[13] Later during ATP's 2009 Music Festival, Bradford Cox announced that the band will be going on hiatus.[14] This was wrongly interpreted by some people, and meant as a hiatus for the rest of the year, to give Cox time to tour for Logos, his latest release under the Atlas Sound moniker. They have recently been announced as an opener for Spoon on their upcoming tour to promote Transference.[15] They were also one of the acts billed for the eleventh installment of the Coachella festival[16], and it was recently announced that the band have been chosen by Matt Groening to perform at the edition of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he is curating in May 2010 in Minehead, England.

Influences:

Lead singer Bradford Cox has cited many musical influences that contribute to Deerhunter's sound, some of which include The Clean, The Fall, The Flying Lizards, Kompakt records, The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds, Stereolab, and Liars. However, if their influences had to be "narrowed down",[17] Cox would note their "defining influences" as Echo & the Bunnymen, Brian Eno, David Bowie and My Bloody Valentine. However Bradford Cox also states he takes influences from Motown including Martha and the Vandellas.[17]

ATLAS SOUND

"Atlas Sound" is the musical solo project of Cox, although he has used the name to represent his music since he was a child. He had access to a cassette player with two tape decks, which he used to layer guitar and drum sounds, and his own voice. In listening to some of these old tapes (of which Cox believes he has over five hundred in storage) he found "Some of it is absolutely, terrifyingly bad, but sometimes I'm just like, 'Wow, that's cool.' That's actually how some Deerhunter songs happened. 'Spring Hall Convert' [from Cryptograms] was like that. That was a tape I made in ninth or tenth grade." Cox writes his music stream-of-consciousness, not writing lyrics in advance, and constructing songs by adding more parts until he feels "it's getting crowded."[1] The name of his project is derived from the brand of tape player he used, Atlas Sound.[2]

Cox began Atlas Sound in the wake of his work with Deerhunter because "I have ideas that I can't make work with a five piece rock band...There's kind of this palette of sounds that I use that I don't necessarily get to use with Deerhunter."[3] Because the music Deerhunter makes is a collaborative effort, Cox does not want to assert himself as its principal songwriter. "I might have an idea for a fragment of a song, but I want to leave it skeletal so the guys can fill it out. Whereas with Atlas Sound, everything is done in an hour." Cox created the music for his first record in the software Ableton Live, utilizing an array of computer-based instruments, as well as his own live recordings.[4]

To date, there have been two full-length releases by Cox as Atlas Sound: Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel in 2008, and Logos in 2009. The lyrics of Let the Blind Lead are autobiographical in nature, reflecting life experiences of Cox.[4] In discussing his second album, Cox characterized his first as being a "bedroom laptop type thing" and "Very introverted." In contrast, Logos was written in several parts of the world, and is "not about me. There are collaborations with other musicians. The lyrics are not autobiographical. The view is a lot more panoramic and less close-up. I became bored with introspection."[5] An unfinished version of Logos was leaked onto the internet in August 2009, two months before its intended release date.[6] In response, Cox almost ceased production on the record, later saying "I did not react well to the leak, in retrospect. It became the kind of internet-fueled drama that I was quickly learning to despise."[5]